The Planetization Structure, Blueprint and Plan Provides
the New Coordinates and Scaffold to Change the World

Pentagon Insider Has Dire
Warning

by Dr. Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked
the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered
insights into the looming attack on Iran and the loss of liberty in
the United States at a recent American University symposium. What
follow are his comments from that speech. They have been edited only
for space.

Let me simplify . . . and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has
occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep,
that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies
ahead with the next 9-11. That’s the next coup that completes the
first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental
of our Constitution . . . what the rest of the world looked at for
the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the
world—in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights,
individual rights protected from majority infringement by the
Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

There have been violations of these principles by many presidents
before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of
illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss
Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against
Americans.

All these violations were impeachable had they been found out at the
time but in nearly every case the violations were not found out
until [the president was] out of office so we didn’t have the exact
challenge that we have today.

That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson,
Kennedy[?] and others. They were impeachable. They weren’t found out in
time. But I think it was not their intention, in the crisis
situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our
form of government.

It
is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that
comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David
Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early
1970s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but [they] have believed
in executive government, single-branch government under an executive
president—elected or not—with unrestrained powers. They did not
believe in restraint.

When I say this, I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think
they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire
to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a
love of this country and what they think is best for this
country—but what they think is best is directly and consciously at
odds with what the Founders of this country [and the Framers of the
Constitution] thought.

They believe we need a different kind of government now, an
executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what
we’re getting with ‘signing statements.’

Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one
[way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves,
but in other ways are just saying the president says: ‘I decide what
I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.’

It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under
the entire control of the executive branch, essentially of the
president—a concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive
powers in one branch, which is precisely what the founders meant to
avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability
in the Constitution.”

Now I’m appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it
is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from
my experience that on this point the Founders had it right. It’s not
just ‘our way of doing things’— it was a crucial perception on the
corruption of power to anybody, including Americans.

On
procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power
under control because the alternative was what we have just seen,
wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.

That brings me to the second point. This executive branch, under
specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition [even] from most of
the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war
against Iran, which, even by imperialist standards, [violates]
standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly
everyone in the executive branch but most of the leaders in
Congress.

The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to
control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many
other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …

But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say
that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course
it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a
supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane
in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t; it doesn’t
even make it unlikely.

That is because two things come together that with the acceptance
for various reasons of the Congress—Democrats and Republicans—and
the public and the media, we have freed the White House — the
president and the vice president—from virtually any restraint by
Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.

And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power
are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.

And the question is what then, can we do about this?

We
are heading toward an insane operation. It is not certain. [But it]
is likely.… I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage
us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full
recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.

What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of
an attack on Iran, is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually.
However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the
next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on
Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.

And . . . we will not succeed in moving Congress, probably, and
Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And
that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that small,
perhaps—anyway not large—possibility and probability to avert this
within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to
make for the rest of our lives.

Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will
take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t
be started under the next administration.

Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and
averting a further coup in the face of a 9-11, another attack, is
for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political
and moral courage of which we have seen very little.

We
have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of
people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position,
lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being
called terrible names, ‘traitor,’ ‘weak on terrorism’—names that
politicians will do anything to avoid being called.

How do we get more people in the government and in the public at
large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How
do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of
pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get
Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting
them to obey their oaths of office.

I
took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant,
as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the
State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I
took an oath of office which is the same oath of office taken by
every member of Congress and every official in the United States and
every officer in the armed services.

And that oath is not to a commander in chief, which is not [even]
mentioned. It is not to a Fuehrer. It is not even to superior
officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the
Constitution of the United States.

Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense
Department without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I
knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into
Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.

I
knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it
out then. I was not obeying my oath, which I eventually came to do.

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada—who still faces trial for
refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly
perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war—is the single
officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously
[the matter of] upholding his oath.

The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. [All the
personnel] under him who understand what is going on — and there are
myriad — are violating their oaths. And that’s the standard that I
think we should be asking of people.

On
the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be
demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate—and
frankly of the Republicans —that it is not their highest single
absolute priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic
majority so that Pelosi can still be speaker of the House and Reid
can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.

I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that,
or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should
not worry about that. Of course that will be and should be a major
concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern.
Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it,
let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.”

Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the
Constitution in the last couple of years?

I
am shocked by the Republicans today that I read [about] in The
Washington Post who threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas
corpus. The ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the
Democrats did not get us back to George the First it got us back to
before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.

I
think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this
is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the
Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s
only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding
to the public, only with that can we protect the world from madmen
in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.

And the current generation of American generals and others who
realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves
—they might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies
and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and
would not risk their career or their relations with the president to
the slightest degree.

That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up
here who somehow brought home to our representatives that they as
humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and find in
themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the
world. Thank you.”

“Yes, I
revile Bush, but also he is merely a figurehead for the real Beast.
By the Democrats own words they have unleashed terror upon us and
given it a face of Muslims and Arabs… for their own selfish greed.

“The donkey and the elephant (symbols of the two dominant political
parties) are tied at the hip. Whenever they want to start wars they
put the elephant (Republican party) in front. When the people get
upset enough they put the donkey (Democratic party) in front. We
need to untie the donkey and the elephant and put them on a
reservation, and come up with some real solutions to our problems.

“Solutions that don’t involve imperialism, war, and oppression as
its primary tools. Solutions that actually accomplish solutions to
the terror issues that have been created by those who would rule
over the masses” –
Anon

A Conspiracy
of Two Parties

The Grand Delusion

By
Joel S. Hirschhorn

With
an endless, futile and costly Iraq war, a stinking economy and most
Americans seeing the country on the wrong track, the greatest
national group delusion is that electing Democrats in 2008 is what
the country needs.

Keith Olbermann was praised when he called the Bush presidency a
criminal conspiracy. That missed the larger truth. The whole
two-party political system is a criminal conspiracy hiding behind
illusion induced delusion.

Virtually everything that Bush correctly gets condemnation for could
have been prevented or negated by Democrats, if they had had
courage, conviction and commitment to maintaining the rule of law
and obedience to the Constitution. Bush grabbed power from the
feeble and corrupt hands of Democrats. Democrats have failed the
vast majority of Americans. So why would sensible people think that
giving Democrats more power is a good idea? They certainly have done
little to merit respect for their recent congressional actions, or
inaction when it comes to impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

One of the core reasons the two-party stranglehold on our political
system persists is that whenever one party uses its power to an
extreme degree it sets the conditions for the other party--its
partner in the conspiracy--to take over. Then the other takes its
turn in wielding excessive power. Most Americans--at least those
that vote--seem incapable of understanding that the Democrats and
Republicans are two teams in the same league, serving the same cabal
running the corporatist plutocracy. By keeping people focused on
rooting for one team or the other, the behind-the-scenes rulers
ensure their invisibility and power.

The genius of the plutocrats is to create the illusion of important
differences between the two parties, and the illusion of political
choice in elections. In truth, the partner parties compete
superficially and dishonestly to entertain the electorate, to
maintain the aura of a democracy. Illusion creates the delusion of
Americans that voting in elections will deliver political reforms,
despite a long history of politicians lying in campaigns about
reforms, new directions and bold new policies. The rulers need power
shifting between the teams to maintain popular trust in the
political system. Voting manifests that trust--as if changing people
will fix the system. It doesn't.

So voters become co-conspirators in the grand political criminal
conspiracy. Those who vote for Democrats or Republicans perpetuate
the corrupt, dishonest and elitist plutocracy that preferentially
serves the interests of the Upper Class and a multitude of special
interests--some aligned with the Republicans and some with the
Democrats. Voting only encourages worthless politicians and those
that fund and corrupt them.

Public discontent leads to settling for less through lesser evil
voting rather than bold thinking about how to reform the system to
get genuine political competition and better candidates and
government.

I understand why sane people would not want to vote for Republicans,
based on the Bush presidency. But I cannot understand why
politically engaged people think that putting Democrats in power
will restore American democracy and put the welfare of non-wealthy
Americans above the interests of the wealthy and the business
sector. Bill Clinton's administration strongly advanced
globalization and the loss of good jobs to foreign countries.
Economic inequality kept rising. Trade agreements sold us out.

And in this primary season talk about reforming our health care
system among Democrats never gets serious about providing universal
health care independent of the insurance industry. And why should
citizens be supportive of a party that favors illegal
immigration--law breaking--that primarily serves business interests
by keeping labor costs low?

Nor have Democrats stood up to challenge the official 9/11 story
that no longer has any credibility to anyone that takes the time to
seriously examine all its inconsistencies with what really happened
and the laws of physics.

Whoever wins the Democratic presidential nomination will not be free
of corruption and lies. He or she will owe paybacks to all the
fat-cat campaign donors. Voters will be choosing the lesser-evil
Democratic presidential candidate. Is that really the only choice?
Is there no other action that can advance the national good?

There seem to be just two other choices. Vote for some third party
presidential candidate, but the downside of that is twofold. No such
candidate can win in the current rigged system. Worse, voting gives
a stamp of credibility to the political system, as if it was fair,
when it is not. Voting says that you still believe that the
political system merits your support and involvement.

The second option is to boycott voting to show total rejection of
the current political system and the plutocratic cabal using the
two-party duopoly to carry out its wishes. When a democracy no
longer is legitimate, no longer is honest, and no longer serves the
interests of ordinary citizens, then what other than violent
revolution can change it? When the electoral system no longer can
provide honest, corruption free candidates with any chance of
winning, what can citizens do? Either stay home or just vote in
local and state races and for ballot measures.

I say remove the credibility and legitimacy of the federal
government by reducing voter turnout to extremely low levels. Show
the world that the vast majority of Americans have seen the light
and no longer are deluding themselves about their two-party
democracy. A boycott on voting for candidates for federal office is
a form of civil disobedience that has enormous power to force true
political reforms from the political system. This is the only way to
make it crystal clear that the presidency and Congress no longer
represent any significant fraction of the people. This is the only
way to show that America's representative democracy is no longer
representative and, therefore, is no longer a credible democracy.
Just imagine a federal government trying to function in the usual
ways when only 20 percent of the eligible voters actually voted.

It takes more courage to boycott voting than to vote for lesser evil
Democrats and in the end this is the only way for people to feel
proudly patriotic. This is the only way to not contribute to the
ongoing bipartisan criminal conspiracy running the federal
government.

We have broken government because the spirit of Americans that gave
us our revolution and nation's birth has been broken, in large
measure by distractive and self-indulgent consumerism. It is better
to recognize that those who vote suffer from delusion than to
criticize those who do not vote as apathetic. Non-delusional
nonvoters recognize the futility of voting.

Democrats will not restore our democracy. That is the painful truth
that most people will not readily accept. Such is the power of group
delusion. Voting produces never-ending cycles of voter
dissatisfaction with those elected, both Democrats and Republicans.
It is time to break this cycle of voter despair. Voters that bitch
and moan about Congress and the White House have nobody to blame but
themselves, no matter which party they voted for.

Fast forward to Election
Day 2008: Network anchors, cable pundits, and state and local election
officials are going nuts as evening hours pass and voter turnout is
hardly approaching 20 percent nearly everywhere. “What’s going on?”
everyone is asking incredulously. TV and computer screens all over the
planet show Americans in streets celebrating and shouting things like
“We’ve had enough political corruption. We’re not going to take
anymore!”

In contrast, news
anchors are grim and aghast with little help from spin-fatigued and
stammering Democratic and Republican spokespeople. At 2 A.M. on NBC
Brian Williams sits with Tim Russett and Keith Olbermann, and sums up:
“Americans have spoken and American politics have changed forever.”
“It’s like the nightmare of entertainers: nobody shows up for their
event,” says bemused Olbermann. Russett grimly observes, “We should have
seen this coming; people have been fed up with both parties for a long
time.” Meanwhile, the Internet is buzzing with talk of voiding the
presidential and congressional election results, that President Bush may
declare a national state of emergency, and that the Supreme Court might
step in again. Did anyone think that the Constitution required a minimum
voter turnout to make elections legit?

***

America’s
political system is a large and complex criminal conspiracy. Most voters
enable it without benefiting from it. Voting is a ploy of the two-party
power elites to keep the population docile, delusional and duped. Our
government has been hijacked in plain sight, despite elections. We
cannot get it back by voting. All the main candidates are part of the
conspiracy. Voting only encourages them. In our fake democracy corrupt
politicians use doses of voting as a political narcotic. We must free
more Americans of the addiction. Otherwise they will keep hallucinating
that some Democratic or Republican President or controlled Congress will
actually give us the changes we crave for.

Attempts to hold the
government accountable have failed and will continue to fail. The system
is rotten to the core. It sustains itself both by preventing major
political reforms and undermining those that get passed to temporarily
placate the public. Arrogant power elites feel no obligation to be
accountable to the public. Elections are not a threat to the status quo.
Elections are distractive entertainment, a political narcotic.

Voting became a
political narcotic when it stopped working to improve government and
became used to legitimize a corrupt, two-party failed government.

Voting – especially
lesser-evil voting – sustains our fake democracy more than any other
citizen action. It lets politicians claim that they represent the
sovereign people. It tells the world that our elected government has
public support. Voting sends the wrong message to everyone. No matter
who you vote for, voting says the political system is fair. It is not.

Power elites own the
government and use it to serve their interests and protect a corporate
plutocracy. Though a numerical minority – probably about 20 million
Americans – an Upper Class easily manipulates the remaining 280 million
by controlling the consumer economy, the distractive culture, and
government policies and spending.

This is what
America’s political freedom has morphed into: Dissidents free to protest
(to make us feel good). Elites free to control (to maintain corruption).
Conned citizens free to vote (to keep the system looking democratic).
And most Americans free to borrow, spend and consume (to stay hooked on
work, antidepressants, sleeping pills, alcohol, sports, computers,
religion, gambling and illegal drugs). Where do you fit in?

In our drugged fake
democracy, Americans replace objective reality with illusions. The US
does not excel in nearly any statistical measure of democracies. Our
voter turnout is a disgrace. We imprison more people than all other
nations combined. We do not provide universal health care or affordable
prescription drugs. Our primary education system is mostly awful.
Economic inequality is incredible – with the top one percent owning 21
percent of the nation’s wealth – and getting worse. People are made
addicted to consumption and borrowing, then left to suffer from
crippling debt. Painful economic insecurity blinds the submissive middle
class whose belief in the American dream is akin to expecting to win a
lottery.

In a nation that
supposedly prizes competitiveness there is no real political
competition. The two major parties maintain a collusive stranglehold on
our government. Third party candidates are purposefully disadvantaged.
Incumbents can thwart opponents. Worse, though the two major parties
shout their differences, they are merely two sides of the same coin, two
heads of the same beast, two servants of the Upper Class, and two
protectors of the corporate plutocracy. They are criminal
co-conspirators. Superficial differences between candidates keep voters
entertained, manipulated and rooting for “their” team in the political
game that the mainstream corporate media (more co-conspirators) make
tons of money from.

In this charade
minor, maverick primary season presidential candidates contribute to the
illusion of a competitive system. Their loyalty to party trumps their
commitment to major political reforms. They do not tell their supporters
that if they do not receive the nomination “stay home” rather than vote
for one of their opponents. No, those they opposed in the primary season
are seen as lesser evils than anyone from the other party. This protects
the two-party system.

In America’s fake
democracy citizens are fooled by personal freedoms. It is a fake
democracy because the will of the people is not respected by those
elected to run the government, the rule of law is routinely violated by
those in power, the Constitution is regularly dishonored and disobeyed
by elected officials and judges, and all but the wealthy are sold out
through government-assisted corporate globalization.

No wonder that
America is a joke to much of the world’s population. Foreigners envy our
materialism, not our government. With horrendous hypocrisy we use
military power to impose democracy abroad despite having a flawed
democracy at home. Foreigners’ disgust with our government is one thing,
but they like Americans. Yet Americans enable and sustain the detested
government by voting, then blame those elected rather than fix the
broken system. A few crooked politicians and corporate bosses go to
jail. But the criminal system remains. Nothing but token reforms are
made. Corruption continues.

Few Americans are
dissidents. Many more block the painful truth that their cherished
democracy is a fraud. The land of the free is no longer the home of the
brave. Foreign enemies are used to keep people from bravely fighting
domestic tyrants.

Like magicians using
slight of words and misdirection through lies, politicians (and those
that own them) have trivialized the fact that about half of the
electorate does not vote. Nonvoters have been blamed when the corrupt
system is at fault. Rather than see nonvoters as apathetic we should see
them acting rationally because voting is unproductive. Nonvoters should
never feel guilty, only proud to have sent a none-of-the-above rejection
message.

But voter turnout
has not been sufficiently low to forcefully discredit, dishonor and
de-legitimize American democracy. Though low, it has become an accepted
norm, allowing the manufactured myth to continue – that we live in the
world’s greatest democracy, though nothing could be farther from the
truth.

With false hope,
voters believe that the right Democrat or Republican will do what none
of their predecessors has done, and that campaign rhetoric and promises
will actually translate to post-election action and policy. Voters fail
to understand the depth of our culture of dishonesty that has also
invaded the voting process.

Held secretly in
private hands is proprietary source code that instructs the voting
machines on to how to count the vote. More than 1/3 of all votes cast in
our nation are made on touch screen machines driven by proprietary
source code and 90 percent of all votes cast are counted by software
that’s unverifiable.

No sane American
should trust the political system, the politicians, and the voting
process. And when you cannot trust all three, you have a fake democracy.
Many of us thirst for major change, but mainstream politicians simply
exploit this and lie. By voting for any of them we ensure no serious
change. The way to shake up the system is to boycott voting.

In sum, despite
personal freedoms we also have political tyranny as oppressive in its
own way as any authoritarian, dictatorial government. Americans have
lost the revolutionary spirit of their ancestors. Americans are unable
to revolt, despite revolting conditions. They have accepted the tyranny
of taxation with MISrepresentation. The political criminal conspiracy
has successfully used cultural genetic manipulation to replace the DNA
of revolutionary courage with the DNA of distractive, self-indulgent
consumerism. Our primary freedom is to borrow and spend. Our currency
should read “In Greed We Trust.” We have populist consumerism, not
populist politics. Divisive politics keeps people fighting each other
rather than uniting against the rotten system.

Delusional
prosperity is what our delusional democracy creates for the majority.
Many millions of Americans are hurting from loss of good jobs, crippling
health care costs, staggering debt, unaffordable college education,
imminent foreclosure or bankruptcy, rising economic insecurity, working
two lousy jobs, time poverty, dependence on food stamps and charity.
Millions more are angry about endless political corruption and
bipartisan incompetence, the inability to get a new 9/11 investigation,
uncontrolled illegal immigration, and our national debt. The rebellion
needs all of them. And they need the rebellion.

True, we have plenty
of passive nonvoters, a good head start. Now we need active, vociferous
nonvoters – proud protestors and dissidents urging others to join the
civil disobedience to reach the tipping point for revolutionary change.
After we achieve major political reforms we should pursue mandatory
voting – when voting once again has civic meaning.

Massive,
unprecedented nonvoting has the power to produce systemic political
reform by defiantly discrediting, dishonoring and de-legitimizing
America’s fake democracy. When I choose not to vote I do not make the
votes of others more important. Their votes already serve an evil
system. The critical choice is to vote or not vote, not picking a
particular Democrat or Republican. When I choose not to vote I embrace
an honorable, patriotic rebellious act of civil disobedience. I no
longer buy the BIG LIE that there still is an American democracy worth
participating in. As James Madison said, “Conscience is the most sacred
of all property.”

Mass nonvoting sends
the message of rejection – as powerful as using guns. The Second
American Revolution begins with this recognition: We must work together
to drive voter turnout down to abysmal levels – so low that everyone
gets the rejection message. We must let the world know – and America’s
power elites fear – that we sovereign Americans intend to take back our
government. But how?

It begins with a
boycott of voting. See it as a populist recall of the federal government
that makes our Founders proud. It is followed by demanding what the
Founders gave us in our Constitution for exactly the conditions we now
have: an Article V convention of state delegates that can propose
constitutional amendments, especially ones to reform our political
system to make it honest and trustworthy. Learn more at www.foavc.org.

Why have we not had
one in over 200 years? Why has Congress been allowed to disobey –
actually veto a part of the Constitution and violate their oath of
office? There is only one logical explanation: An intensely watched
convention could wreck the political status quo and take away the power
of those running and ruining our nation. That so many Americans fear a
convention just shows the success of the social conditioning and
political narcotics the elitist plutocracy has imposed for decades.
Imagine an amendment that required at least 90 percent voter turnout for
federal elections to produce a winner.

When it comes to our
nation our choice is not to love it or leave it, but to accept the
painful truth and take responsibility for restoring American democracy –
because we love it. Let’s move forward with this slogan: “Don't vote--it
only encourages them.”

First Woman, First Black, First Latino, or First Honest President?

Most Dishonest Politicians Have a Better Chance of Winning

[Joel S. Hirschhorn
was a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology
Assessment and the National Governors Association, and is the author of
Delusional Democracy – Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the
Government. Reach him through
www.delusionaldemocracy.com.]

By
Joel Hirschhorn

The
phrase honest politician has become an oxymoron. We should not be
impressed by the prospect of having the first woman, first black or
first Latino president. What would be far more radical would be to have
the first honest president, if not ever, certainly in a very long time.

Presidents in recent memory have been excellent liars, contributing
mightily to our culture of dishonesty. Bill Clinton had the audacity to
look right into the TV camera and blatantly lie to the American public.
George W. Bush has probably set a record for official lying, though it
might take many decades to fully document them. Carl M. Cannon saw the
bigger truth: "posterity will judge [George W. Bush] not so much by
whether he told the truth but whether he recognized what the truth
actually was."

Things have gotten so bad that hardly anyone can even imagine an honest
president. But if we don't expect an honest president, how can we expect
to trust government?

Don
Nash made these insightful observations, "If America was ever faced with
a politician who spoke truth to the people, no-one would know what to
make of the oddity. This politician could probably not get elected to
office. Sadly, Americans can't handle the truth. ...Lies, then, are the
consequential destruction of American democracy. Little by very little,
the lies and lying politicians have chipped away at America's
Constitution and the American form of government."

Rampant lying by politicians is a major reason why so many Americans
have stopped paying attention to politics, stopped hoping for political
reforms, and stopped voting

Lying politicians probably tell themselves that the public cannot take
the truth. Many convince themselves (lie to themselves) that lies of
omission are not really serious like lies of commission.

Just how bad things have become is shown by the recent decision by the
Supreme Court of the state of Washington that lying politiciansare
protected by the 1st Amendment. They are free to lie as much as they can
get away with. Free speech apparently is a green light for lying, even
though it leads to rotten, dishonest government.

During this primary season it is worthwhile to look at Republican and
Democratic candidates from this honest-president perspective. A truly
honest president would have the greatest loyalty to honoring the rule of
law, the Constitution and the needs of the public, rather than what we
have grown used to: greatest loyalty to their party and the moneyed
interests funding it. If the nation really wants a change president,
honesty should be a requirement.

On
the Republican side, Ron Paul looks like the most honest candidate.
Straight-talk John McCain still seems to have better than average
honesty, and Mike Huckabee seems relatively honest, except when he talks
about his record on taxes as governor. On the Democratic side, Dennis
Kucinich and Mike Gravel look the most honest, with Bill Richardson
running close. Among third party presidential candidates in recent
history, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan stand out for their honesty, which
clearly was not sufficient to prevail against liars.

Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney are pretty comparable
big-time, gold-medal Republican liars. And with Romney we might get the
first Mormon president, but not an honest one. If Hillary Clinton wins
the nomination, then the most dishonest Democratic candidate will have
prevailed. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that only 34
percent of Americans view Senator Clinton as honest. As to Barack Obama,
viewed as 50 percent more honest than Clinton in some polls, his
statements about his upbringing, universal health care, and campaign
funding cast doubt on his honesty. Still, he seems successful in selling
himself as honest. Liars are bad, but liars claiming to be honest are
worse. Odds are that there will be no honest Republican or Democratic
presidential candidate to vote for in 2008.

An
honest president would threaten the corrupt, dishonest and rigged
two-party political system, so one getting a presidential nomination is
improbable. How could an honest person obtain financing for their
campaign? How could they get diverse groups to support their candidacy?
Candidates tell different groups what pleases them, and eventually
contradict themselves. Flip-flopping sounds bad, but is even worse when
the new position is a lie.

Some may suggest that a candidate does not have to be honest during
campaigning, but only be honest once elected president. But can someone
with real character find it easy to lie repeatedly during campaigning
and then have the ability to stop lying once elected? I think not.
Besides, how can citizens detect the potential honest president if that
person is behaving like all normal lying candidates during campaigns? A
truly honest person must stand out and be seen as exceptional by the
public because of their habitual honesty. Much of the appeal of Ron Paul
and Dennis Kucinich is their perceived honesty. But the candidates most
likely to succeed attract supporters for their policy positions,
promises or ability to win, despite not being seen as honest. That makes
their supporters delusional. They lie to themselves to justify their
support.

This means that most people reject choosing a candidate on the basis of
their perceived honesty. They knowingly choose dishonest politicians.
Why?

Lies entertain. Honesty disturbs. Honesty produces painful truths about
the nation, government, and failed public policies. Truth-telling
politicians usually say things that people would rather not hear and or
think about.

Meanwhile the mainstream media and pundits, promoting confrontation and
horse races to entertain and keep their audiences, are reluctant to call
lying politicians liars. Instead, they use oblique language and
euphemisms to conceal the truth about lying. They are as dishonest as
the politicians they talk about. How interesting it would be to have
media people ask candidates something like: Are you being the most
honest person you can be in this campaign? I don't think the majority of
dishonest ones would not say "yes." Instead, they would dance and
blabber.

Tragically, Americans have become used to lying politicians. Can our
democracy survive when most people believe that an honest president is
both impossible and unnecessary?

Of
course, honesty by itself is no guarantee that someone will be a great
president. Nor is it by itself sufficient reason to vote for someone.
But imagine if we insisted that it be a necessary, minimum requirement
for supporting politicians.

In
the end, without honesty, every reason we use to vote for someone is a
joke. Delusional thinking about candidates has produced our delusional
democracy. Time to stop voting for liars. Better to not vote at all.
Voting for liars only encourages more lies.

Why do we
keep throwing billions of dollars down a black hole just to maintain
this pathetic charade that fools no one? Why not just load up the
boxcars with pallets of crisp-new hundred dollar bills and ship them off
to Crawford where they end up anyway. Let Bush worry about how to
distribute the loot.

11/19/07 "ICH
" -- -- One hopes that at some point the American people will come
to the realization that most elected officials these days do not serve
the public interest, but their own economic self interests and those of
their financial backers. The few who would serve the public interest are
filtered out by the insurmountable fortress of capital that is the
bulwark of electoral politics, especially at the federal level. Genuine
public servants have roughly the same chance of winning a seat in
Congress or the Whitehouse, as one has of winning the lottery.

For the
totally uninitiated, or those on narcotics: the odds are astronomical.

It requires
unfathomable sums of money to even play the game, and that, in and of
itself, precludes the majority of us from meaningful participation. It
filters ordinary people possessed of ordinary means from serious
contention. Ordinary people overwhelmingly comprise the national
demographic, and yet they are wholly without representation in
government at virtually every level. Without substantial financial
backing, you can play but you cannot win. You are relegated to the outer
fringes of the system, a distant planet circling a distant sun in a
distant orb.

A game in
which only the wealthy can afford to play assures that only the wealthy
will win. The result is that we have a system of electing politicians to
serve a very tiny segment of the population—less than one percent, while
simultaneously working against the great majority and, accordingly, the
public welfare.

In the
rarified lexicon of corporate run politics—profits matter, people don’t;
no matter the self righteous proclamations to the contrary. The wonder
is that so many people continue to invest so much of their precious time
and energy in a system that has so obviously and completely abandoned
them.

Perhaps
abandon is not the appropriate word. Betray might be a better
choice. Electoral politics in the US is the realm of high rollers and
robber barons, not of ordinary people from working class backgrounds
struggling for a piece of the much ballyhooed ‘American Dream.’ That
system has utterly betrayed them, leaving them out in the cold to fend
for themselves as best they can, against the very crooks and thieves who
are mortgaging their future to the Corporate States of America.

The
people’s plight is akin to playing the lottery and hitting the jackpot
against enormous odds. It is a game of desperation in which defeat and
loss are the predictable outcomes for all but a few. The money system
wins, we the people lose; and we look like fools and chumps for having
played the game against such tremendous odds. But, as Thoreau said so
well, “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
Collectively, we have yet to show much wisdom. We just keep doing what
we have always done and keep getting the same sorry results, and wonder
why things never improve.

When the
choice is between Hillary Clinton, Rudi Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt
Romney, John Edwards and Barach Obama, there is no meaningful choice.
The difference between these candidates is primarily a matter of
semantics. In each case you are getting essentially the same person
representing the same economic self interests, the same policies. All of
them are pro war. Contenders are in contention because they are the
recipients of serious corporate money, not because they are champions of
the people or servants of the public welfare.

Ron Paul is
not the answer either, as so many so desperately want to believe. Like
his neoconservative brethren, Dr. Paul seeks to shrink the public domain
and privatize everything—including all public lands. Economic self
interest is the centerpiece of Paul’s political ideology and that not
only does not serve the public interest, it undermines it. Dr. Paul is
as much a product of Milton Friedman’s economics as any neocon and
equally dangerous.

We have an
electoral system that always chooses between two evils, what Ralph Nader
calls, “The evil of two lessers.” But choosing the lesser evils assures
that evil rules and, as we have seen, the evil is deepening with each
successive election.

To my mind,
Dennis Kucinich is better suited to represent the people than any of the
other candidates in the field. However, the democratic leadership will
never permit Kucinich to win the party nomination because he would
undermine their authority and threaten the established orthodoxy that
controls the system.

Genuinely
progressive candidates are cynically used by the party leadership to
create the appearance that the party still has an effective liberal wing
when, in fact, it does not. The progressive wing of the party exists but
it has been marginalized through lack of media exposure, lack of
financial backing, and through the lack of support of the party
leadership.

Candidates
with the qualifications of Dennis Kucinich only serve to retain the
party loyalty of progressives. It keeps progressives playing the game
while also preventing them from doing anything meaningful or
revolutionary.

We saw what
happened to Howard Dean a few years ago; and Dean was a very moderate
liberal, at best only slightly left of center. Progressives will not be
allowed to compete.

More people
already choose not to participate in electoral politics than those who
vote. It is not difficult to understand why: because they see elections
as the sham they are, riddled with corruption and illegitimate to the
core. The people intuitively know when they have been disenfranchised.
They know that elections are about profiteering, not about public
service or the collective good.

It must
also be noted that the previous two presidential elections were stolen
by George Bush and his cohorts. There are serious concerns about the
efficacy of paperless electronic voting machines, like those
manufactured by Diebold with its close ties to the Republican Party and
neo-conservatism. A system in which foxes are the guardians of the hen
house is not in the people’s interest; nor is it in the interest of
justice.

As US
citizens, we should have enough integrity that we do not allow the
public wealth to be stolen with our blessings. We should denounce the
process that unabashedly transfers the public domain into the private
sector as the outright theft that it is. We should not pretend that it
is the pubic interest or that it is a democratic process because we
voted for it. It is self-interested greed and nothing more.

I could not
blame any sane person for not voting, for non-participation in a process
that is so obviously fixed. We need to devise better and more
imaginative strategies through which to express our dissatisfaction, our
outrage with the process. A good beginning might be to wash our hands of
that system entirely.

Clearly,
the solution is to get the special interest money out of politics. But
how can the people achieve such an ambitious objective against such
tremendous odds? Those who benefit from the system effectively own it,
and they are not going to voluntarily dismantle it. It is too lucrative
for them to let it go and erect a genuinely democratic system in its
place.

Participation in a sham system, while pretending that it is legitimate,
will only prolong the prostitution and continue the corporate feeding
frenzy at the public trough. We must do something different than what we
have always done in the past, if we are to get a different result.

One method
of undermining the system may be to boycott the 2008 elections by not
participating in them. Since the outcome is already predetermined by the
selection of only pro corporate candidates—war mongers and disaster
capitalists all, there is really nothing to lose. The system is rigged
to keep the war profiteers and corporatists in power, by keeping genuine
public servants out of contention. The appearance of democracy and
citizen participation is just window dressing, more facade than real.

As
democracy craving citizens in an ever more dangerous emerging fascist
state, our energy would be better spent denouncing the electoral process
that only masquerades as a democracy than participating in it and giving
it the appearance of legitimacy to the outside world. We have an
obligation to expose it for the sham it is and say, “No more!”

This might
be accomplished by boycotting all federal elections until the special
interest money is coerced out of the process, and the playing field is
leveled; where outcomes are determined by ideas and commitment to public
service, rather than access to huge amounts of capital and cronyism.

Perhaps
then Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader might have a legitimate chance to
win office, or even your next door neighbor. Public service could be put
into the political process thereby legitimizing it by making it
democratic.

Electoral
boycotts could be conducted by large numbers of public spirited citizens
turning out not to vote, but instead to protest, which if widely
publicized would be too large and too controversial to be ignored even
by the corporate media—democracy in action indeed. We really have
nothing to lose.

As it is
now, government is nothing more than a revolving door between political
administrations and business. Corporate lobbyists are running the
government rather than the people.

Voting is
one of the sacred cows that symbolize a democratic republic but it does
nothing to actually create such a republic, especially in the absence of
meaningful choice.

The
strategy of boycotts is low risk to the individual and it is legal. It
requires very little physical effort and little personal sacrifice.
Everyone can participate, regardless of political knowledge, income
level, age and party affiliation. It could potentially become a grass
roots movement toward real democracy and it could begin immediately. If
conducted on a large enough scale, it could provide real results too.

The idea of
political boycotts does not originate with me but I believe the
initiative has merit. Perhaps we should give it the serious
consideration it deserves. How such boycotts might be organized will be
left in more capable hands than my own. The first step is to widely
publicize the idea and to generate serious discussion about it. Let the
dialog begin.

A Note about Reform and Revolution:

Ultimately
what we are talking about here is not reform but revolution. Voting in
the absence of meaningful choice is a poor substitute for real
democratic processes. It is an exercise in self-deception and futility
designed to keep the working class people servile and marginalized.

Electoral
boycotts are one of many tools available to us as we plant the seeds of
revolution and create the atmosphere for a major paradigm shift sometime
in the future. Boycotts are a peaceful way of hastening the change that
will eventually make a more just society possible; a world in which just
people, not wealth and privilege, decides the future.

The
political system should belong equally to every citizen, rather than to
the moneyed gentry that have locked most of us out. No one is going to
give us the keys. We must take them because they rightfully belong to
us.

Revolution
is possible only with a broad awakening to our predicament in a sham
democracy that is subservient to immense wealth and power. Awakening
must be followed by enlightenment through self-education and
comprehension of the problems we face as a people. It will grow by
having serious discussions amongst ourselves and by putting everything
on the table.

Revolution
is a word that scares some people because it conjures images of armed
rebellion and chaotic violence. But it does not have to be so. India was
transformed by non-violent resistance to horrible tyranny. The people
and their detractors will decide what form it will take.

Revolutions
do not just suddenly erupt. They are grown slowly and over increments of
time, beginning from seeds that are carefully sown and nurtured. Sowing
seeds are an act of faith; an expression of hope that there will be a
future worth living.

Revolution
should only frighten those who hold the keys to empire. We are only at
the very beginning of a long journey of transformation. We are laying
the foundation stones of fundamental change and redistribution of wealth
and power that must be based upon justice and equality.

Charles
Sullivan is a nature photographer, free-lance writer, and community
activist residing in the Ridge and Valley Province of geopolitical West
Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com

For those of you who caught 60 Minutes last Sunday, link provided
below if you didn't, the railroading of former Alabama Governor Don
Siegelman is a chilling example of the next step down that slippery
slope of computer-enabled stolen elections and unaccountable
government.

Watch this video of
Siegelman. It will shake your core and cause you to
commit anew to do more to fight back while there's still time. Siegelman
describes the theft of 2002 election and explains how the votes were
stolen from him using optical scan computers (the kind NY will soon be
voting on if we don't resist now). The Governor was unseated in 2002
when 6,000 votes were changed in the middle of the night, and no one was
permitted – ever – to see the ballots. Today Don Siegelman is a
political prisoner in the United States of America.

The 60 Minutes segment didn't mention that the 2002 election was
stolen. It focused instead on the sham prosecution and railroading of a
democratic Governor in a Republican state, the gross abuse of power, and
made the case that even a man as powerful as Siegelman, who had not only
been the Governor, but had also served as Attorney General, Secretary of
State and Lieutenant Governor, can be removed from office, branded, and
whisked off to prison for seven years – simply for standing in the way
of the likes of this Republican party. But it was shortly after the
interview linked to above, that Karl Rove (working with the Justice Dept
and the Alabama GOP) launched trumped-up charges which led to
Siegelman's being locked away and silenced in a federal prison cell,
where he remains at the time of this writing. Still think it can't
happen here?

This is a tragic story that happened and is happening to a Democratic
Governor for doing nothing more than being a Democrat. In exchange for
doing those things we expect a governor to do and for his willingness to
speak honestly when elections are being stolen this Governor has been
treated so that he may serve as a lesson to others. As Larisa
Alexandrovna, one of the few journalists to investigate this case in
depth,writes:

For most Americans,
the very concept of political prisoners is remote and exotic, a practice
that is associated with third-world dictatorships but is foreign to the
American tradition. The idea that a prominent politician – a former
state governor – could be tried on charges that many observers consider
to be trumped-up, convicted in a trial that involved numerous
questionable procedures, and then hauled off to prison in shackles
immediately upon sentencing would be almost unbelievable.

Not only was
Siegelman not given the usual and customary courtesy of being allowed to
remain free while his appeal was pending, but also he has been given a
special assignment designed to serve as a message to others in power
with backbone and integrity or sentimental attachment to democratic
rule. Governor Siegelman is cleaning latrines in Oakdale, Louisiana,
where he was dispatched after being sentenced. He was imprisoned for
taking a bribe from Richard Scrushy, even though the undisputed evidence
shows that he never received anything from Scrushy. The prosecution
moved on the theory that Scrushy's donation to a campaign fund was a
personal benefit to Siegelman. By this same theory, there should be 146
open criminal investigations of President Bush and Karl Rove, because
there are 146 individuals who made or procured donations of $100,000 or
more to the Bush-Cheney campaign with a clear expectation that they
would be given appointments in the Bush Administration, and then
received those appointments.

See also http://www.crisispapers.org/essays8p/siegelman.htm - which
discusses how these actions are not isolated incidents but represent the
actions of a party intent on destroying their opposition: willing to do
whatever it takes, be it distributing $4 billion dollars so that every
state can have computerized voting machines which can then be
manipulated to steal elections, blatantly corrupt political
prosecutions, firing US attorneys who wouldn't contribute to creating
the appearance of voter fraud and hence the need for voter ID laws --
laws which are nothing more than yet another means to control the
electoral process, pressuring the remaining 85 US Attorneys to do what?
(see from the piece, A study by Donald
Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, may supply
an answer: "the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation
investigate seven times as many Democratic officials as they investigate
Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of
African Americans in traffic stops." (The numbers: 298 Democrats, 67
Republicans, 10 "Others").